Miniaturization of electronic equipment continues making great progress and offers new mobile solutions such as SMS (Short Message System) und WAP (Wireless Application Protocol). The advantages offered by this development are, however, accompanied by drawbacks such as lack of ergonomy and small, poorly arranged screens. One crucial and continuing problem is the entering of text.
Recognition of spoken language is already more advanced than recognition of handwritten text. Nevertheless, a silent form of entering text is preferable over the oral form, for respecting privacy and confidentiality e.g. in public transportation, in public places and open-plan offices.
The most popular method for entering text is by keyboard, first of all the QWERTY keyboard. Keyboards are designed for typing using the fingers. This is the main reason why the size is a minimum of appx. 24×8 cm if entering by the 10 finger system is a requirement. There is also equipment with significantly smaller QWERTY keyboards precluding practical use of the 10 finger system. This does not really make sense as better and clearer keyboard layouts exist where far shorter distances must be travelled by a single finger.
Despite the fact that more efficient and simpler to learn keyboard layouts exist, the QWERTY keyboard has become the standard (M. Helander (ed.), Handbook of Human-Computer Interaction, Elsevier (1988), pp. 475–479).
Miniature QWERTY keyboards which are equally as large and voluminous as the portable phone itself are optionally available for mobile telephony (SMS). Supplementary full size keyboards (whereby one product can be folded up) are available for palm top applications with touch screen. Keyboards of this kind are about four times the volume of the palm top set itself. An approach, as described in these examples, is opposing the idea of miniaturization and indicates the need for equipment with new methodes of entering text.
The figure keys of cellular phone keyboards are additionally occupied by three letters. One of the three letters is entered by several brief actuations of the key at short intervals. This form of entering text is reasonably space-saving but very tedious and slow. Enthusiatic SMS writers exhibit amazing readiness to achieve perfection in this form of entering data.
A very similar improved device (Nokia Mobile Phones Ltd., Salo, Finnland) demands touching of the keys only once although each key has multiple functions. By use of a stored vocabulary the device recognizes the word being typed. If a word to be entered is not stored in the vocabulary and if the device identifies several possible words the writer must choose the desired word from a menu. This step detracts from the actual writing process, or even interrupts it, if the menu does not display the desired word.
One approach to improving entering of text is by using so called touch screen monitors; because they serve the double purposes of entering and monitoring. The available area is thus put to optimum use. Devices with a touch screen monitor without keyboard represent, therefore, an interesting alternative.
There are such devices which display an on-screen keyboard (most commonly QWERTY), where individual key sections are tapped by a pen. Basically they work the same way as the palm top applications already described (PSION Computers PLC), with an actual keyboard. Even if the keyboard has been optimized for pen use (single finger system), every single character needs a “key” displayed, calling for additional screen area. Furthermore, every character must be tapped individually causing a lot of pen movement while increasing error tendency at the same time.
Several touch screen devices offer hand writing recognition. Unfortunately this feature does not work optimally. There are systems that try to anticipate entire words using extensive vocabulary. Handwriting is very frequently erroneously interpreted by the device, causing the user to be diverted from the actual writing process. There is an other system which requires entering every single letter in handwriting (capital lettering) which is quite slow. Letters need to be entered by a special ‘Graffiti’-alphabet (U.S. Robotics, Palm Computing Division, Los Altos, Calif. U.S.A.). Frequent use of the Graffiti alphabet may cause alterations to the personal hand writing style. An additional problem of these devices is their demanding programming which calls for memory space and processing capacity and entails delayed display of the text entered.
When writing on paper a support is necessary and the hand must be guided which is especially cumbersome under limited space conditions. When using standard hand writing (longhand) a large number of movements must be carried out by the hand. An abbreviated writing method such as shorthand according to Stolze/Schrey (Emil Hug), Englische Stenographie, 16th. edition 1960) enables faster writing. In exchange, new characters, abbreviations of words and a shortened, orthographically incorrect, way of writing must be learnt. An equally high learning effort is required for fluent reading of shorthand.